Adolescent Issues

Adolescent issues are one of LifeChange main areas of specialty. Adolescents can suffer from a host of pressures, from the biological changes of puberty to the psychological issues surrounding who they are in life and in society. Becoming a teenager now starts earlier with menstruation and sexualisation beginning earlier and extending well into the mid- twenties. Adolescents often behave in ways that puzzle and concern their parents, teachers and friends. What can happen is that teachers, parents and teenagers can get stuck in blaming and labeling cycles, this can do damage to intimate relationships. During this difficult time, conflicts may arise in the home as adolescents assert their independence and separateness. This can often entail embracing values that their parents do not approve of in their attempt to individuate and form their own identity.

LifeChange provides a potential space, a safe confidential place, where the intense relationship formed between adolescent and practitioner enables teenagers, either through art, creative means or words, to express and exhibit their problems and symptoms. The psychotherapist then can help the teenager to explore more primary emotions and understand the unconscious drives and fundamentally solve these problems.

LifeChange Can Help:

Evaluate the problems in your teen’s life

Understand and explore difficulties in safety

Provide a personal and individual treatment plan

Adolescent Depression:

Depression can be overlooked or complicated in teenagers due to “acting out” behaviours commonly connected to anger and rage. Hence, depression in teenagers may present as irritability, aggression or fits of anger, which mask deeper emotions of sadness, helplessness and vulnerability. Anger in this case understandably protects the adolescent from the unbearable pain and the feeling of vulnerability. Anger can provide a powerful and necessary defence of the core self from experiencing these strong feelings.